It's so "affordable" here, everyone is getting evicted

Jane Place has a report out this morning on evictions in New Orleans. Read through at your leisure but I'll just point out a few things real quick. This is a survey of court-ordered evictions.  They were only able to include here the cases Timothy David Ray recorded in-between writing out big checks to guys who moved boxes for him.  So much of what goes on in New Orleans happens on an informal basis so, doubtless, the count here is low.

Even so, the numbers are strikingly bad. The study finds our eviction rate to be twice the national average. Black renters are disproportionately affected. And the most evictions tend to happen in "affordable" neighborhoods.

Residents in these neighborhoods are experiencing the highest housing cost burdens despite the comparatively lower housing costs. Residents in these neighborhoods also face the highest barriers to accessing economic opportunities such as quality jobs, reliable public transportation, and suffer from a lack of amenities such as grocery stores

And, as the report notes at the top of its intro, rents in New Orleans have increased by almost 50 percent during the past two decades while incomes have stagnated and declined.

So what to do? Well, there are recommendations in the report too. We could debate the relative merits of each. But suffice to say the housing crisis requires a more comprehensive solution than simply adding "supply" to the market.